"Don't touch that orb!" Leah can be seen falling from above her robes fluttering in the air, Jack stops his hands from touching it but feels his hand being sucked toward the orb while it's floating towards him.
The orb starts to shine bright red as Jack's eyes change into their demonic form for a split second, quickly changing back to normal.
Leah lands on the ground pushing Jack away while making several hand gestures before yelling;
"4-Corner Sealing Technique"
The floating orb is floating in the air when energy gathers from the 4 cardinal direction and gathers together forming into a pyramid shaped barrier as the red glow dulls and Jack is released from the induction of the red orb.
Leah leaps down looking at Jack seriously to see if he's demonified but looking deeply into his eyes she isn't able to see anything different; she lingers for a few moments but her face blushes causing her to look away, towards the now sealed orb.
Letting out a sigh of relief, she releases her senses covering the area and frowns as she looks at an indistinct hill not far away, "This will hold the orb here for now, you need to make sure you don't let anything happen to this seal."
"What is it?"
Leah looks toward Jack but quickly looking away again, "I don't know, it just appeared from a weird statue that popped up. The first one was broken by this guy in a red robe, I think I have seen the robes before but I can't remember."
She throws two items at Jack without looking at him, "You keep those as it's all caused by this person, I have taken care of the first wave of the creatures coming this way but you'll need to handle the rest..."
Jack catches the two thrown items, a small black ring and a long red-coloured spear made of strange materials, he can feel it emitting a faint fire qi, he gives it a quick twirl before standing it by his side.
She finally looks at him adopting a serious expression, "The demonic creatures aren't going to stop, you need to prepare for this to last some time. Something is leaking massive amounts of demonic qi into the land causing strange statues to appear everywhere tempting people and manipulating their mind into releasing these red orbs...."
Jack sincerely nods his head.
"I have to take care of the rest of the region, it's part of my job if I don't do it, my power will be taken and given to a replacement"
Leah looks away letting out a sigh, she never asked to have this region beast job it was just forced upon her and now it will take all her life's cultivation work for another if she doesn't help solve this issue.
"Take care of Mai, I'll be around to check on you guys from time to time"
"Don't worry, I promise to take care of her"
Leah deep purple eyes peer into Jack’s blue eyes with mixed emotions, worry and regret fill her eyes as their gazes just hold there for a moment. She can feel her face becoming blushed again, now isn't the time to be dealing with this sort of stuff but she can't help it.
Jack can feel he wants to make a few steps forward and embrace Leah, she has an enchanting beauty effect on him but he holds back his desires and breaks the stare, turning his head but having a big smile on his face.
Leah is drawn out of her trance like state as she shakes her head once before disappearing, Jack sighs as her figure vanishes and looking toward the direction she left, a hill not too far away.
"Ok everyone, we need to figure out what's going on, you heard the young lady!" Jack announces to Drakon and the group of soldiers not too far away.
“Albert, you lead the people into town while we will send someone to collect all the animals. You need to report everything to Hilda before I arrive there”
“As you wish, my Lord” Albert lowers his head in respect, showing that the village has a strong backer like Leah is going to be very helpful to showcase its strength to all the new villagers.
"Lord, I suggest we keep a minimal force here to keep an eye on things while we plan out our defences and strategies at the city hall, I believe Hilda would love to get involved"
Jack smiles while playing with a ring within his hand, this ring most likely solved several of their issues as he lightly strokes it, his first storage ring, a momentous occasion for most people, he slips the ring onto one of his fingers.
"Yes, let do that I believe we'll find a few things easier from now on" Jack remounts Sleipner and rides back to the village as he inspects the spear.
[Sacred Mountain Fire Spear] Grade: Epic, Stats: Str+10, Dex+10, Description: A spear forged with materials collected from Sacred Mountain, the spear head is made from an ancient fire dragon tooth and numerous legendary ores while the shaft is made of an unknown fibre that will not break.
This spear is much better than using the city-lord weapon all the time as it’s still just a basic iron sword, it will upgrade over time but for now it will easily be damaged in direct contact with another weapon.
Jack lightly runs his hand along the spear feeling the intricate patterns engraved on it as rides the short distance back to the city hall building and relays the information to Hilda,
“So basically, we need to prepare defensive fortifications while preparing for an endless wave of countless demonic creatures of some sort.”
"Your Majesty, I have just the design for a city wall it will be both majestic and show the might of the dragon race"
Hilda pulls out several books before stacking them high on the table, opening one up and pointing at a very specific page without referring to anything nor pausing at all.
Jack looks at the paper, it contains a design for a giant city wall that look like Dragon wings, going up in sections while providing multiple layers of good defines and honestly don't look bad, Jack nods his head as he quite likes this design.
"Looks good but what is it made of?"
"It has to be made of the finest dragon jade otherwise the intricate designs won’t come out, it needs to showcase each dragon scale which can even have a rune engraved on them enabling the wings to even have the special abilities of dragon runes." Hilda explains almost stuttering her words.
"Dragon Runes? Dragon Jade? Uhh, where do we get that?"
"Your Majesty is great; I am sure Your Majesty can find where to acquire them without much effort"
Jack scratches his head upon hearing this mindless praise, it feels good to hear but asking him to find finest quality dragon jade when he has never even seen the lowest quality dragon jade is somewhat difficult.
"How about something that we can acquire, like something the kobolds can dig like a common stone... Perhaps even wood?"
Hilda's expression stiffens while she closes the book and pulls out another one, repeating the same motion as before.
Jack looks at this design, it looks like a common city wall that he saw at Feather Town, just made of stone and wood with metal plating and spikes. A fairly standard city wall that covers the minimum while being easy to maintain.
"It looks good but I feel that we'll need to be prepared for them to have some sort of strong fire skills like we saw with the sheep, can we design it so that we can swap out the parts for upgrade later?"
Hilda looks at the design for a moment, before flipping a few pages and landing on a design that is similar to the previous one but behind it is a triple layer wall with a progressively stronger layer the further you get back, starting with wood and finishing with metal.
"This is a wall design for fortresses, if we are going to need to prepare for stronger creatures that have special spells then this will be our best option with our limited resources"
"Good, that will work best and I would rather over prepare than under prepare."
The two talk for some time and decide on a route for the city wall to take, as the village acquires experience its territory will expand in size.
This will cause the city wall to not cover the new section of land, they will build a progressive wall if it's required while building out a large moat to the north-east and expanding that as far as possible to provide a natural barrier, very few things can survive the poisonous waters.
They discuss a few more things, Albert was able to bring in over 20,000 gold coins greatly increasing the village's gold reserves while providing another 119 residents, mostly malnourished slaves but there are some high ranking people among them that are well suited to tasks, such as the young man that spoke out, he is SS rank and will be exceptional at anything.
“Can I see the rest of your books?”
Jack feels curious about the contents of the several other books that Hilda pulled out, some of the pages she flipped through had some interesting designs for weaponry such as catapults, trebuchet, pulled chariots and even futuristic designs that looked like a puppet Dragon.
“Your Majesty, I am glad that you have taken an interest in these books, they are historical records that I have compiled from memory at the height of the Holy White Dragon Empire but most of the designs are incomplete”
Hilda has a sad look on her face as she starts to run her finger along one of the books as if remembering something painful.
“I would like you to try to complete any designs you can, these might be a great help to this new village you are now part of, and who knows, maybe asking for help on some problems you have with the designs will result in a solution”
“Your Majesty, I will keep that in mind for the future and will consult with you and others about problems, sometimes I forget that this village isn’t relying just on me”
Jack nods towards Hilda as they discuss where to place the new arrivals.
Drakon enters the building and Hilda proceeds to inform him about everything that has been decided, looking toward Jack he speaks;
"Lord, I believe we should prepare anti-demonic things, such as holy and light energy but we aren't able to produce anything here that has that effect"
Jack thinks for a moment, he should have the option to travel to a city for free today but it might be suspended due to the change in event.
He can go to Council Union City or Sacred City, one will probably be easier to buy the goods but it has a higher exit tax while the other one probably sells a lot of holy and light items, they will be far more annoying to deal with but they have a lower exit tax.
Jack opts to go to Sacred City; it has a lower exit tax and probably sells a lot of Holy element things going by its name.
"I'll go to Sacred City with today's teleport and see what I can purchase if I can, it'll be much easier with the storage ring now"
"Ok Lord, what are we going to do about the mining village?"
"Shall we send some soldiers to escort them here while also sending kobolds there to secure the underground mine area?"
Drakon pauses for a moment to think, he looks down at the map before them at where the mine town is marked compared to Dragon - Phoenix Village before speaking up.
"It'll take the kobolds sometime to go there on foot but if we send them in batches on the carriages Albert brought back, securely escorted while bringing the towns people back and possibly set up a consistent convoy to ferry resources”
"I agree with Drakon's suggestion, it’ll be good to give our soldiers practise escorting a convoy like that if our region is going to be chaotic in the coming times" Hilda speaks up giving her opinion from an administrative viewpoint.
“We shall go with that; I hope you will ensure the safety of the kobolds as we don’t seem to have any military jobs unlocked for them yet. You both are entrusted with that task, what are Bane and Tahel doing?"
Jack would like to speak with them regarding using the Historical Person Summon offered by the city heart upon levelling, mostly Bane as he is a historical general but Tahel gives Jack an odd feeling, like he's hiding much more than he lets on.
"Bane seems to have... taken a liking to the bunny jobs and would like to develop them into a cohesive underground force" Hilda explains trying to hide a smile but her voice gives way to a slight giggle.
"What's funny about that?"
"Nothing sir, I just believe he will be adopting his own bunny ears soo...." Hilda stops her words abruptly as if she bit her tongue.
"What? Finish your sentence"
"No, no sir it's nothing"
Jack frowns at her before turning towards Drakon, Hilda can be seen with a look of relief as if she got away with something;
"I'm going to unlock the next historical person; shall we save the profession upgrade?"
"As you wish, Lord"
Jack speaks with them for a few more moments finalising what he needs to take care of, today he needs to go to Sacred City and buy a load of stuff with a storage ring he hasn't even looked in yet, leaving through the door to the city hall building his eyes are met with the blinding sun indicating that it's well into morning when he lets out a yawn.
He feels tired but not exhausted, stretching his body while looking up at the sun, there's many things he needs to do today so walking down the road, the sounds of the village still ring in his ears, the sound of multiple hammers banging, the hiss of metals being dunked in water to cool down.
A few more steps the sounds are placed by the sounds of soft banging can be heard from the Armory, people shaping the softer metal suit to be used in the various military gear already in use.
Soldiers are rushing up and down the road as they lead all the new arrivals to their various posts, most of them entering the kitchen to get a meal before heading into the tailor to pick up some new clothing. Horses hooves can be heard everywhere on the street as sheep bleating can be heard in the distance.
He continues to walk through the town and comes upon the garden area that his white tent is located within, the giant willow tree and the various Australian plants are still full in bloom, the garden bed full of flowers in various colours including the distinctive fiery red of the wild fire grass and the black and gold of the demon suppressing grass.
The little tree that gave him the fruit with the power to kill that giant centipede is growing quite well, he takes a deep breath taking in the smells of plants and spring as he walks through the door taking in the sights of the tent.
Jessica is still curled up in a ball snoring away as though she has no care at all, Jack almost feels like jumping into the bed with her but he knows that if he does, he’ll spend all day there lazing about.
Jack turns away and proceeds to change his clothes into another set of robes before sitting down at the table to inspect the storage ring but looking at the table he's surprised at what he sees sitting on top of it.
It's a long oblong shaped object with a rounded end, if it were purple and slightly bent it could be considered an eggplant, but it's made of stone and looks very smooth.
Jack's mind starts to process the information, it's placed on top of Jessica's robe indicating that she probably placed it there so does that mean she wanted to get a... dildo?
'That doesn't make sense' Jack shakes his head as he says inwardly and brings up the system information:
[Jade Palace Key] - Grade: Special, Description: A key for the Jade Palace, at the appropriate time the key will shine with the brilliance of the moon, one just needs to turn the key into the moonlight to cause the doorway to appear.
Jack has a huge smile on his face upon reading the information, he was worried that since the event is cancelled in this region, the beggar will not show up but it appears that Jessica did it without anyone knowing.
Jack puts the key down and looks into the storage ring, it's filled with a lot of things.
There's not much gold but there's lots of herbs, crystals, powders, pills, books, pieces of paper and some sealed boxes. He isn’t sure what most of them are for and given that he doesn’t have enough time right now to go through each item one by one, he pulls out the first piece of paper hoping to gleam some information.
‘1 x 1000-year-old Fire Lingzi, 10 x Four-Fire Dan, 1000 x Qi recovery dan, 100 x Magma beetle shell….’
It appears to just be a list of things contained within the ring and quickly checking against the list, Jack is able to see that it’s mostly correct but it doesn’t list the things within the books nor the sealed boxes.
Jack isn’t able to see anything immediately exciting within the storage ring but it provides a massive 30m³ storage room so he makes a decision to give most of the items to Hilda and Maurice to handle while keeping the books, sealed boxes and some of the medicines. He feels that there’s some secret contained within those items but he will need to spend some time with it.
Jack quietly stands up before putting the Jade Palace key away in the storage ring, whispering a quiet “Thank You” towards the blanket ball containing Jessica before he leaves the tent, walking down the road towards the City Heart Building after collecting gold from Albert.
He has two tasks to accomplish at the city heart, awakening the next historical person and seeing if he’s still able to teleport to Sacred City.
